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Archive for July, 2015

Like the air you breathe, abundance in all things is available to you. Your life will simply be as good as you allow it to be. Abraham-Hicks

Now is the time to believe in faeries and to acknowledge all tiny tickles: desires, wishes, imaginings, beliefs, seeds of ideas . . . Carolyn Myers

“Breathe in the gifts that are waiting for you; Breathe out the resistance to accepting these gifts.”

I say it all the time. In every yoga class, as we lie on our backs, one bent leg drawn in, hands clasped around the shin, as we allow our breath to deepen and our bellies to rise, I say it, and I sometimes pose these questions as we invite our thigh in a little closer to our torso on the out-breath in this yoga asana of letting go: “What feel-great abundance have you shut away in the closet? What treasure are you resisting that could make your life feel even better?” And although I listen to the answers that rise up from my own deep center as I say these words, the treasure that I remembered tucked away in my own home’s upstair’s hall closet on the Fourth of July never once made its way into my consciousness during these yoga sessions.

Perhaps it took a boy who was about to turn three, a boy with a buoyant sweetness in his spirit and a willingness to believe that anything is possible to jar my memory. After our picnic dinner, as the busy holiday was winding down and bedtime was approaching, my grandson Viren and I were playing with a collection of barnyard animals — a cow, a chicken, a pig. And it was the pig that caught my attention, the pig that set off the sparklers of insight in my mind. It was flying. Viren held it high and it whooshed through the air and this pig — this pig could fly! And that’s when I remembered. Nestled in tissue in a box in the closet was a whole flock of them, pigs that could fly. Six months ago, in the depths of the U.P. winter, I had received this flock of flying pigs as a birthday present from a dear friend. And, when the wind is howling and the snow is blowing sideways, what is one to do with a flock of crystal-clear fragile-glass flying pigs who are hanging from a garden mobile but to pack them away and wait for warmer weather? And what better day to set them free but on the Fourth of July!

So that’s what we did, Viren and I. We set them free! We scampered into the hall closet, rummaged through a box in the back and found that flock of pigs lying there in their birthday tissue patiently waiting for their declaration of independence. Grandpa Cam jumped on board the flying pig mission, attached wire to the hook on the top of their mobile, then Viren and I found the perfect branch on our front yard apple tree, draped the wire over it and set those pigs to flying.

And that was good enough. That was better than a Fourth of July scoop of ice cream, to witness crystal-clear pigs suspended in the summer air, their perky wings catching the light. We didn’t expect anything else from the flock. What could be better than this, pigs with wings, fluttering beneath the the branches of a magnificent apple tree! So we said our good-byes to the flock, and, along with Grandpa, strolled through the neighborhood as the first stars pierced the Fourth of July sky. And, by the time we returned home, the moths and the winged insects were wisping about the front porch entry and the darkened lawn was tucked in for the night. Except it wasn’t. Not exactly. There was something happening over by the apple tree. Something unusual. There was a glow in the Fourth of July air. And it wasn’t lightning bugs. And it wasn’t sparklers either. It was something else. It was those pigs! Those flying pigs, they were glowing. They were shimmering. And we, the three of us, I think we all were squealing as we fixed our eyes on those shimmering glimmering glowing pigs!

And so they fly there now beneath the branch of the sprawling apple, catching the light of the day, shimmering and twinkling far into the night. And, once you get used to it, it doesn’t seem that unusual at all to host a family of flying pigs in your own front yard. And I wonder about it. What else might be stuffed in the back of our closets? What surprise might appear if we rummage about? And what might happen if we rattle the cages of our own closeted minds? What gifts lie waiting to glimmer and shimmer and set us all free?